Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

LG BE06LU10 external Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive with OS X?

eji

eji

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 8, 2004
403
60
INW
I spotted this external Blu-Ray player/burner and HD-DVD player while I was out at my local electronics store. Unfortunately, the sys reqs call for Windows and the LG support folks say it *might* work on OS X but hasn't been tested.

Anyone have any luck pairing the LG BE06LU10 up with a Mac? I could really use the space offered by BDRs for backup, and the HD-DVD compatibility is a nice bonus.
 
eji said:
I spotted this external Blu-Ray player/burner and HD-DVD player while I was out at my local electronics store. Unfortunately, the sys reqs call for Windows and the LG support folks say it *might* work on OS X but hasn't been tested.

Anyone have any luck pairing the LG BE06LU10 up with a Mac? I could really use the space offered by BDRs for backup, and the HD-DVD compatibility is a nice bonus.
Click to expand...

I'm buying the internal drive version of this and sticking it in an enclosure to go with my iMac. From what I've read OS X should be able to see the drive and use it for disc burning (Toast for Blu-ray). You will not be able to view the video in OS X though.

I would imagine that the internal and external versions of this would be exactly the same. I should have mine in the next couple of days and can let you know if it works.
 
nordesmic said:
You will not be able to view the video in OS X though.
Click to expand...

That's something that never even occurred to me. Why not? Is it because OS X lacks the native codecs? And if so, could it be solved by Perian or VLC?
 
Can anyone answer this? Please? I'm sure others must have the same question.
 
eji said:
That's something that never even occurred to me. Why not? Is it because OS X lacks the native codecs? And if so, could it be solved by Perian or VLC?
Click to expand...

It is not because of the video codecs because the discs use either h.264 or VC-1, which can both be played on a Mac in the correct form. The issue is to do with HDCP (High Def Copy Protection) which has to be supported by the hardware and software on the Mac. Apple have been very slow to implement HDCP because they are not fully behind blu-ray and are generally opposed to copy protection.

I plan on using my drive in a Windows environment to play/rip the discs. OS X will still be able to use the drive you just won't be able to play the films.
 
MAC and BLU RAY LG External Drive BE06LU10

Has anyone had success using the new BD external LG drive BE06LU10 with OS ?
 
Thanks for answering the question definitvely, Tallest Skil.

I never realized that playing movies wouldn't be possible, even though I've actually done a lot of copywriting for Sony on the matter of Blu-ray. Either I wasn't paying attention, or the HDCP incompatibilities are something they're trying to downplay. My guess is the latter.

So now that we've established that the BE06LU10 will burn in OS X, my query has changed slightly: What will it take to play Blu-ray on OS X? Are we going to have to wait for Apple to officially support Blu-ray in a future version of OS X (Snow Leopard, f'r instance), or is it possible that some enterprising hacker will come up with a workaround? Or, if software is only part of the equation, will our Macs' hardware need to support HDMI in order to play Blu-ray discs?
 
I recently purchased a BE06LU10. I have a MacBook Pro OS 10.5.3, Hires 1920 by 1200 screen, 2.66 core 2 duo, NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT graphics card w/512 MB graphics memory, 4GB RAM, 200 GB 7200 rpm Hitachi drive.

There is no HDMC problem with the graphics card (per NVIDIA) I have a Toshiba REGZA 42" LCD monitor w/ no HDMC problem (per Toshiba). I have a Monster DVI to HDMI connector and a Monster HDMI cable.

The manual that came with the drive said I needed a Windows XP Pro w/SP2 or Windows Vista 32 or 64 bit OS to use the drive. I bought Vista Ultimate and installed it (via Boot Camp) on my Mac. I later found out (from LG) that OS 10.5.3 would recognize the drive as plug and play. It does. I can buy Roxio Platinum 9 for $100 and burn Blu-ray discs. But it won't play them.

The Cyberlink PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra LG OEM player that comes bundled with the drive will play them but there is no support for HDMI (per Cyberlink). In order to get HDMI support you have to pay them $100 for the Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 8.0 player. I had to dig to find this out, and when I asked them what to do about upgrading I didn't get an answer.

I spent an hour on the phone with LG USA support and found out that if they want the demo model they have in their shop to do HDMI they have to pay the same $100.

To end this if you want HDMI playback, buy the CYberlink PowerDVD player 8.0 Ultra, install Vista 64 as a dual boot on your Mac ($269 from VioSoftware) use the PowerDVD player (in Vista) to play Blu-ray disks on your external monitor. The rest of the Cyberlink 8.0 suite to do everything is about two grand so just use the Adobe CS3 software you probably already have and burn Blu-ray discs from the Mac side.

Yes, I have over $1000 in this Blu-ray burner and still another $100 of extortion money to pay Cyberlink. Yes, I could have bought a desktop PC with one already in it for that. Yes Apple needs to get off their ass. OS 10 (read BSD) is capable of supporting all of that. OS 10 Snow leopard is going to give you some more access to the Berkely Standard Distribution Unix operating system that you already have. Yes, you can wait for that to happen or alternatively, you can dual boot another copy of Free BSD with all of the UNIX treasures already "unlocked", but you may not be able to use the Aqua desktop I don't know.

If this helps anyone I'm glad.

To clarify this a little. I am speaking only in reference to the BE06LU10 LG external Blu-ray burner. I don't have, or have any experience with, any internal Blu-ray burners/drives. In the last month both Sony and Panasonic have brought external Blu-ray combo drives to market. When I bought my LG BE06LU10 drive in May there were no others to choose from. It is curious that not only did the drives show up so fast but they all cost the same (if you can find one) and they use the same software (same $100). The problem is not in getting the Blu-ray discs to play on the drive and show up on my Mac screen in HD, but in getting the software to support HDMI transfer to my external LCD TV/Monitor. Toaster Platinum 9 doesn't support HDMI playback. Cyberlink's PowerDVD 8.0 Ultra does, but it is only lame Windows software. Hence the need to Bootcamp Windows.

I need the Mac for Final Cut Studio (software only for apples) and because of this I bought CS3 for the Mac as well. Adobe says the CS3 software will burn Blu-ray.
 
internal, USB and eSATA BR drives work with OSX and can be used in Toast. Internal and eSATA will not be recognized in Bootcamped Windows though (without some complicated hack, I hear). I learned that the hard way.
 
I have one of these external drives plugged into my mac pro and it works perfectly. As some people have already mentioned, you cannot use the drive to watch blu ray movies though. If you have ripped blu ray movies in windows and restarted in OS X though, i have found that some movies (individual m2ts files) will play in Toast media player. It depends on the codec used to create the files.

Another thing to mention with this drive is that it won't work with all brands of blank media. I've tried at least one cheaper brand of media (Ritek) and while the drive recognised the disc, it gave me an error when i tried to burn. The user manual that comes with the drive lists 'Recommended' brands that are known to work but i'll list them here anyway.

BD-R: Mitsubishi Kagaku Media, Maxell, TDK
BD-RE: Mitsubishi Kagaku Media, Maxell, Sony, Panasonic
 
CraigW, if you're thinking of spending the $100 for Blu-ray software anyway, try ArcSoft Total Media Theater first. There is a demo version available, and it should work fine in Bootcamp (doesn't in VMWare Fusion :( .) I found that playback is much better than PowerDVD, and the Arcsoft program still supports HDD-based playback, as well as any audio and video output you would use. And it's BD Live 2.0 compatible.

Also, I have had success using an LG internal SATA Blu-ray/HD-dvd drive, in a SATA-to-USB enclosure, with my iMac. OS X detected the drive as a blu-ray drive, and VLC Player would sort of even play the video. Sort of. Hopefully a newer version will actually be able to play properly.
 
Help with Blu-Ray and a Mac G5

I have an LG GBW-H20L inside of a Galaxy 5202AUAS, and a PowerMac G5 with OS X 10.5.4, a SGI 4- Port SATA Raid card and for the life of me, I can't get my Mac to see the Blu-Ray drive. can someone Please give me an idea of what they did to get theirs working. . . .
 
Are home video files playable after recorded on LG BE06LU10

I have an iMac and am looking at purchasing the External LG BE06LU10. I know that it is compatible in the sense of burning Blu-ray discs and I know that it can't play Blu-ray movies (such as the ones you get from the store); however, I am wondering about video files such as those that I pull from my HD camcorder and edit, etc. with Final Cut Express or other software. Would the resulting video file then be viewable on my iMac if I placed the blu-ray disc back into the drive or would my home video files still not be recognized?
Along the same lines, if I burn a data disc using the burner, if I put the disc back into the burner will I be able to see/retrieve data from that disc?

I'm kind of a newbie to Macs and want to make sure I have all the facts before I purchase this LG drive. Thanks!
 
evanh said:
I have an iMac and am looking at purchasing the External LG BE06LU10. I know that it is compatible in the sense of burning Blu-ray discs and I know that it can't play Blu-ray movies (such as the ones you get from the store); however, I am wondering about video files such as those that I pull from my HD camcorder and edit, etc. with Final Cut Express or other software. Would the resulting video file then be viewable on my iMac if I placed the blu-ray disc back into the drive or would my home video files still not be recognized?
Along the same lines, if I burn a data disc using the burner, if I put the disc back into the burner will I be able to see/retrieve data from that disc?

I'm kind of a newbie to Macs and want to make sure I have all the facts before I purchase this LG drive. Thanks!
Click to expand...

If you burn the videos on a Blu-Ray disc as a data disk, you'll be able to store the videos on there. But don't expect to be able to view them, unless your Blu-Ray player can play that file type.

Maybe next Tuesday Apple will FINALLY add Blu-Ray support. If they don't, I think they'll be making aother big mistake, and they might not be able to recover. It's great that there's HD rental with :apple:TV, but if they don't do something soon in the HD arena, they're going to get KO'ed.
 
MacBass said:
If you burn the videos on a Blu-Ray disc as a data disk, you'll be able to store the videos on there. But don't expect to be able to view them, unless your Blu-Ray player can play that file type...
Click to expand...

So perhaps if I burned the video files in a data format like you said, if I make sure they are in a format that the PS3 (since that is our BD player) can recognize then I might be able to get away with keeping the files in a data format and then be able to pull them back up on the Mac in the future if I ever want to burn an actual video disc for friends or family, correct?

And it sounds like actual data, such as pictures, etc. wouldn't be an issue to burn onto BD and then put the disc into the BD Burner and be able to read the disc again.

Is something supposed to happen next Tuesday? Like an announcement from Apple?
 
MacBass said:
If you burn the videos on a Blu-Ray disc as a data disk, you'll be able to store the videos on there. But don't expect to be able to view them, unless your Blu-Ray player can play that file type.

Maybe next Tuesday Apple will FINALLY add Blu-Ray support. If they don't, I think they'll be making aother big mistake, and they might not be able to recover. It's great that there's HD rental with :apple:TV, but if they don't do something soon in the HD arena, they're going to get KO'ed.
Click to expand...

I'm looking into getting a new laptop and because of the iPod Touch, I'm looking at Mac's now (The iPod Touch is a very amazing device, its what the palm os and windows mobile os should of been). Anyways, I agree that getting blu-ray is important, but blu-ray drives are still very expensive. The cheapest blu-ray option I've seen is for a read only blu-ray drive for $150 in a 16.4" Sony laptop, or a read/write drive for $300. The smaller drives that would go in the much thinner macbooks/macbook pro's I imagine would be more expensive. Lenovo has a blu-ray option on some laptops at around $500 dollars, and Sony's small Z laptop has a blu-ray read/write option for $500.

Anyways, my point is that Apple should start offering them up as an upgrade option in the macbook pro's, but macbooks will be out of luck since it'll end up costing half of what the laptop costs.
 
I know this is an old thread, but my question is this.

Just bought an LG BE06LU10 drive today, running under Snow Leopard.

I am using MakeMKV to rip some of my Blu-Ray DVD's.

The read speed for BD-R is spec'd at a maximum of 6 times.

The fastest (Read Rate as indicated by MakeMKV) I seem to get with the drive plugged into my 2009 unibody 15" MBP is about 3.4x speed.

I have no other USB devices plugged into my MBP.

I was hoping for a faster read rate - has anybody else achieved a higher read rate using MakeMKV.

Thanks,
GeoffP.
 
I have my drive mounted internally in my mac pro now since my superdrive died. I tested out makemkv with 'Fast and Furious' and got 4.8x. The speed fluctuated a bit but it stayed on 4.8 for a while.
 
@GeoffP:

So you're ripping BDs in OS X using the BE06LU10?

If so, then I have to reconsider buying one. I've seen a serious price drop for this unit over the past year, but I always thought its utility would be pretty much limited to burning data. And I didn't want the hassle of having to use Boot Camp.

Even if I can't watch directly from the Blu-ray disc, being able to rip (from my own legally purchased BDs, of course) in OS X to a Mac-viewable HD file format would be ideal.
 
If i understand correctly.. i can install the external LG BE06LU10 on to my mac and write my movies from Final Cut Pro 7 on to a Blu ray disk and watch them on the TV ?? I 'm looking for this because they give the full HD quality on your screen..

Luc
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back